


Lone Star

by Zafaria



Category: Wizard101
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-20
Updated: 2019-05-20
Packaged: 2020-03-08 08:24:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,848
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18890833
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zafaria/pseuds/Zafaria
Summary: Interesting headcanon where the celestial beings encountered in the Trial of the Spheres are appointed every few millennia. They begin as extraordinary mortals and, upon attaining a certain graded level of wisdom about the universe, are bestowed longevity; but their soul is perpetually bound to the Trial to protect the knowledge within. They lose their semblances of sentience and individuality and become husk-like, dutiful stellar protectors.





	Lone Star

Lone Star

What happens when the stars align?

Perhaps we are destined to discover this. Valerian and I. We are both students and adventurers, eager and flighty. Both of us have the same crammed, leather backpacks, overflowing with extra pairs of boots, necklaces and amulets we can’t detach ourselves from, and sugary snack cakes that get crushed in our journey.

We venture to the sunken land to learn more. Our skills have advanced and now require magic only stars are privy to, only replicable in the pale face of the moon.

The stars hold everyone’s thoughts, their dreams, their secrets; but they never tell. Their comfort is immortal, their promise eternal. It is with ease that one could let a whisper of the workings of enchantments slip and drift high above their heads, where the stars would listen, and internalize the words. They turn the secrets over and over as they rotate, unfazed in their orbits. Never questioning the nature of these things, never frowning down on one after the murmur escapes their cracked lips and floats beyond.

This land holds those soft-spoken truths, posing the Trial of the Spheres to those who wish to obtain otherworldly and primordial knowledge. We would venture among heavenly bodies and learn the nature of these things.

Or, at least that’s what our professors tell us. Many other students came through here before, unveiled the enigmas, wielded them to their advantage. We all spoke of one stellar prodigy the professors had mentored. The Conjurer.

Now, Valerian tells jokes to fill the silence as our feet slap against stone tiles.

“I was up all night wondering where the sun had gone… then it dawned on me!”

“Hah! That was pretty good!” My eyes and teeth glint. He returns the grin, proud of his cleverness, prouder that he could share it with someone.

Our hands are curled around the straps of our bags, the leather is cracked and paled. Bottles attached by their necks to my belt smack against my hip with every step. The glittery, bubbly blue liquid inside sloshes up and down in the flask.

We are traversing across broken tiles, crushed bits forming a mosaic of a faint five-point star in the sand dunes. There is machinery sitting in the sands, unattended. Waiting. The area is encapsulated, shielded by a large glass dome that holds masses of water up above our heads. Some water finds its ways between the panels and trickles from the sky, forming small oases in the harsh grit-and-stone center of the world.

There is a large dividing wall, ribboned with teal trim and lavender spires and flukes. It opens in the center, a grand arch under a forking crown. This is the place.

Beyond that, visible from where we stand, there is a strange mirror-like surface on the ground. It is raised a little, and the glassy flooring is dotted with three braziers.

We light them. A portal of brilliant orange light like the sun whirs above the spot, and Valerian and I’s awed faces are bathed in rays of sunshine in the reflection on the opalescent ground.

We take unsteady step towards the ball of light. It is spinning so fast, it seems unreachable, uncatchable. But we reach our hands out anyways.

Our hands, covered in oils, with dirt and sand shoved up our nails under peeling cuticles. Somehow, they reach the light which seems so pure and uninterrupted.

We find ourselves in a large atrium with five lobes. The walls and floors are matching slate-colored stones, reaching hundreds of feet up into the air. Green, entwined elliptical patterns adorn the walls. There is an intruding mass of rock on the ceiling of half the area, speckled with brilliant blue crystals. It divides the top point of the space from the other four points.

We know this place well from the legends and myths. There should be four tests in each of the accessible corners; four tests of our abilities, our motivations.

And there are machines here too, but they are sentient. They walk in long, mechanical lurches. They are encased in metallic plates, their heads a rhombus with a single diamond fixated in the point that faces out over the world. Stellar Protectors, created by the old inhabitants of the world to guard the mystery of their ways.

We take care to avoid their pathways, and slink around in the shadows where the light doesn’t brush, with our hands tracing a path on the wall. On the left, we see the Test of Vision.

There are four large stone faces surrounding a chalice, but they avoid staring at it. 

I put my clammy palm flat on the cool side of one of the stone heads. It is maybe a full two feet taller than I am. All the statues have the same, hollow look in their eyes, the space burning with so much incessant power like a spotless sun.

I watch as Valerian walks to the statue positioned diagonally from me and places both his hands on its head. He begins to shove the side of the head, and it turns slightly.

“A hand?” He looks at me with his arm reached out towards me, expectant.

“What? Oh! Yeah, yeah,” I say. I am sluggish to let my hand fall from the cold face, and walk in slow, long strides to where he stands. We lean our shoulders into the statues together and push. The head rotates so that it stares into the endless eyes of the statue I was just at.

There is a sense of intense focus between the two immortal carved faces of the aliens.

We turn the other statues to monitor each other too, and all four of the statues look to the chalice in the center.

I am startled by the sudden light emitted from the heads. Their eyes begin to hum white-hot with energy.

I back away slowly and let my hand brush the wall as I make my way to the next spoke of the star-shaped room. Valerian lingers a moment before dashing to my side.

We pursue the Test of Wisdom in the bottom right of the area.

Hanging over our heads, there are rings with red, purple, blue, and green stellated shapes, the light converging in their many vertices. These stars are also aberrant. Their orbits are out of place.

Valerian and I begin to correct this.

We turn magenta dials on pedestals placed in a careful circle underneath the stars. The blue outermost star had shifted and now spun next to the red star.

“Val, look,” I point at the cosmic spectacle overhead.

“We’re doing something right.”

We take our time, moving stars across the air above us. It is not simple. By turning the dial and adjusting the location of the green star, the blue one shifts away from the others. Eventually, we resort to turning each dial every fourth time.

The orbits overhead glow, and each star sits aligned with the others.

Content with our work of restoring the constellation, we press on, running across the Sanctum to the opposite point of the room.

Four vacant orbs sit in a circle. There is a hum of electricity rumbling underneath each one, following along crisscrossed but incomplete pathways.

“You think they turn on?” Valerian looks at the ground with his hand pulling on his chin.

“Look for a switch on each stand, maybe.”

It is tougher than we first imagined. Within a few minutes, we are crawling on the floor and stirring up dust. We hit button after button and hope that the electricity will be sent from one sphere to another.

I sit back a moment and take out my journal. My hand reaches into my bag looking for something dry, misshapen. I pluck a piece of charcoal and begin drawing a schematic of the Test of Constellation, with the pathways zigzagging and the orbs in each corner. And as I do this, I mumble aloud about how flipping this switch turns on that arc in the path. A few wrong and smudged lines later, I believe I figured out the solution to the unsolvable puzzle.

“Val. Val, look at this…” I hand him the wrinkled page. He stares at it a moment, then slowly nods his head. We try the combination. The spheres flash, and we know we have found our inevitable destiny, ready to continue on to whatever else the Trials would present us.

Except, the teleporter on the other side of the sanctum refuses to activate. We brush it off, stamp our feet on it even, shout all sorts of curses. Valerian desperately unsheathes his athame and begins to pry at the trim of the teleporter. The domed top plate pops off and he surveys the exposed wiring, something his ephemeral being was never supposed to witness.

The ethereal engineering is sophisticated and elegant, but simple at its very core. There is a fourth test, crushed beyond comprehension somewhere beneath the intrusion of dark rock hanging from the ceiling. All the tests create light, electricity, when they are complete, and it is this current that sends power to the teleporter crystals under the surface.

It hums with a mystical electric magic, but is not charging.

Valerian sits next to the portal and leans around it to observe. I do the same on the other side.

"We could overload it," I suggest

"How?” He asks, puzzled by my thinking.

I pause a moment. I am unsure of how myself, until the slow, circular movement of a Protector’s leg draws my eye. "Something powers the machines in here… Wanna find out what it is?"

We approach the Stellar Protectors, my hands pick at nails and wring each finger. They are large, unwavering machines. Valerian pulls each finger to extend it out of its socket with a satisfying, gross pop. He is confident he will distract each one.

Now, I pull out my athame and pry up a plate of metal on the back. We grab a glowing tube with a crystal encapsulated. We go on like this and collect three more, taking additional wiring as we hastily rip the vials from their comfortable sockets. We encircle the teleporter base gain, and Valerian carefully teeters, perched in a crouch, as he slides each tube into place with the rest of the wiring. A spark shock him and he frowns, shaking his hand in pain as the floor shines.

The next room is illuminated in an opaque, hazy way.

Holograms of the different phases of the moons glow above us, their pale faces unreachable. The icons are refracted through a crystal, tainting the images with an eerie, unreal indigo glow. We are to match them to mosaics embedded in the walls above grand arches using a series of archaic buttons on panels. The magenta domes on each stand seem to hum.

We stand at each pedestal and stare at the projections. At each node there are more Stellar Protectors waiting for us. When the images of the moon align, a faint aura of a bridge appears to each separated platform.

Valerian tries to change his methods each time. He starts by throwing his athame, then rushing in with his sword carried low at his side. I cannot watch all his swift movements and cuts, as there are strange artifacts in the back of each platform that I find more interesting.

I look at the ground, at the half of a circle glimmering before me. It is a shield. A very large shield. And towards the front of the room there are grandiose statues with swords, but no defenses. Maybe this shield was the missing piece.

Valerian pulls the generators from the Protectors and we collect the shields they were guarding. We lift the heavy half-moon discs over our backs like a shell. They are weighty, but we steer them to the gargantuan statues and affix them back to the stone warriors.

The statues are blue stone, and of alien beings with elongated heads that are rounded at the top. Their eyes are bulge but have no defined pupils. The lanky, thin forms raise their swords towards the giant purple crystal in the middle of the Sanctum of the Moon. They are the only kind of celestial beings still lumbering around this place.

There was a Celestian there, at some point. Ptolemos with his speckled head, cratered like dark spots on the moon. His eyes were alien and full of a liquid black. They were uninterrupted except for the small shine of light that collected into a single disc.

There had been other dutiful protectors when the Conjurer originally ventured to the Trials. Astraeus and Mythraia. After all three dueled and were defeated, the Celestial guardians ascended somewhere else, confident that their roles harboring the sacred magic would be passed down to someone who had worked harder than they ever did, searched farther, had a more insatiable appetite for the knowledge. The void would be filled by prodigy, the transcendence of legacy from the old beings to the newly initiated conjurer. Success, display of prowess, was a rite of passage.

The air in the Sanctum of the Moon is quiet, and a thin film of dust drifts in the air. I take a breath of the stale surroundings. The only thing left in these Trials is infallible energy, a magical and boundless constant. It is something neither of us really understand. And a guardian. Somewhere, amongst the cracked stones and remarkable crystals, there was someone watching over it all, harboring the secrets of the magic we sought.

Valerian is waiting at the next teleporter, his face drawn. He waves me over and we step into the Sanctum of the Sun.

Here, too, there are looming statues of the warriors. In opposition to their lunar counterparts, they carry shields but wield no swords. The curved blades are fallen on the ground, on high platforms that veer away from a center cluttered with the Protectors.

We pull ourselves up the inclines. I grab the hilt of the giant sword, and Valerian holds on to the sharpened blade as we slide down the slope, towards the statues. With a little concentration and magic, we both are able to lift the blade back to it’s glorious potion; the handle cradled in the statue’s hand and the sword valiantly pointed skyward. After all four soldiers have their swords returned, a faint blue portal glows in their midst.

The Trials are disjointed, disconnected from the limitations of time and space. They exist somewhere detached from our world, watching from overhead with intrigue to see what the small actors on the stage have to present today. We lose our groundings and orientation while walking through the different Sanctums.

Below our feet, there is a large orange crystal spinning above the fiery surface of a star. We look through the clear glass to the all-consuming flames below. Perhaps this is the surface of Sol itself, or maybe it is another star, far-off and impercievable in the sky from the lonely nights sitting on the school grounds. 

The room is hot; a ward against the mortal and living who defy the barriers of this place by setting foot on the unreachable star. We feel watched. We are being judged. 

Maybe this is what she felt like when she entered here, too. And maybe the Conjurer even knew she would win. She would go on to greater things beyond the sun and the stars.

They say that the Conjurer became a diplomat for this world. The first one ever, it was honorable for an outlander to ascend to such a title for a world obsessed with knowledge and understanding, and containing their secrets amongst the few of their kind.

After some time, they say the Conjurer became something else. That the information learned and the wisdom she gained changed her. That the wizard too, became a primal being, a Celestian, and is now poised somewhere in the Astral Chambers we clambered around. The Conjurer is here somewhere.

There is a figure at the head of the room. We think it is another statue at first, but are rattled by the slow lethargic movements of her untucking her hands from across her chest. The Conjurer reaches one arm out and a staff floating gently near her yields to it, drifting into her curved and waiting palm. 

She is steel-blue, with navy wedge markings crossing over her eyes. The staff she is clutching is purple with a spinning, spherical astrolabe affixed to the top. Black robes trimmed with warm yellow flutter around her, and cyan runes glow on the hem of the sleeves and boots. There is a hood masking most her head, but her yellow eyes are visible and luminous beneath it.

Her gaze is piercing, and she scrutinizes us after we observed her in awe. She is slow to speak, cautious. But when she does, her words cut the silent, empty void.  
"I have dwelt in this place for time out of mind, serving… waiting."


End file.
